Monthly Archives: May 2012

Why My Kids and I Don’t Wear Helmets While Biking

Posted on by
3

“Ambulance people came to my school today,” my daughter told me.

“Why? Did someone die?” I asked.

“No, they told us to wear helmets when we bike and life vests when we swim.”

Oh gag.

I went on a 19-mile bike ride today without a helmet. Haven’t worn a bike helmet in approximately 20 years. In those 20 years I’ve biked over 34,000 miles. I’ve now taught three children to bike and never once have they worn a bike helmet.

Undoubtedly I am a horrible father and a terribly risky individual. But I don’t see things that way. Bike helmets do not make people safer.

My kids learned to ride a bike quickly. It didn’t take them long to realize that falling hurts. If I had protected them with helmets, elbow and knee pads, and padded gloves, falling wouldn’t hurt and learning to bike would take forever. My kids have ridden bikes further earlier than any helmeted kid I’ve ever met.

Several studies have been done on this topic disproving the common logic that helmets make biking safer. The BBC reports on a study that says drivers of cars pass bikers with helmets closer than bare-headed cyclists.

The New York Times had a story about statistics showing that as helmet usage went up, so too did head injuries.

This should not be too shocking. As cars become safer they also become faster. The safer you feel, the more likely you are to take risks. Safety leads to Idiocy.

Check out this video of BMX rider Tom Dugan who is recovering from a severe head injury sustained while wearing a helmet. I’m guessing these guys wouldn’t do these tricks without safety equipment! Lesson from this should be: wearing a bike helmet makes you spend your days doing important stuff like vacuuming and arranging hats.

Helmets, plastic coated styrofoam, really don’t offer much in the way of protection, yet you feel safer when wearing one. This feeling of safety, without much actual added safety, leads to out performing your protection and this leads to injury.

If you feel like cycling with a helmet, go for it, I aint gonna stop ya, but nor should I be forced by law to wear what I see as irrelevant to my style of biking.

I deserve to now get hit by a car and die from a head injury. If I do, I do. I won’t change my mind on the issue because it will be splattered all over a beautiful country road and I will be with my Lord in Heaven. Amen.

Spinach and Feta Omelette

Posted on by
4

I love trying new recipes, but right now I’m supposed to be eating low carb foods and there’s only so much you can do with a short list of Foods Your Trainer Won’t Freak Out About. An example of a Freak Out Food would be:
*Anything Yummy
*Anything Sugary (including apples. I’m not sure how I’m going to make it through my annual Month o’ Plums in August.)
*Anything Anyone Else is Enjoying

But, determined to eat right and keep myself interested in foods, and to encourage my lovely cousin, Beth, who is also attempting to eat right, I thought I’d document some good, healthy food choices for you. When you’re watching carbs, you’re pretty much stuck with some basic, elemental foods. But let’s make the best of it, shall we?

Today’s Elemental Food: Omelette with Spinach and Feta 
1. Go pick spinach from your cute garden. Spinach doesn’t like hot weather, but I’m hoping mine lasts a bit longer-

We also apparently planted bunnies and have three growing in a little nest in the corner of the garden:

2. Wash the spinach (homegrown or otherwise) and add to a pan over medium high heat with a tiny bit of olive oil. This was probably about 1/2 a cup of spinach.:

3. Move it around a bit, and in about 4 minutes it will be wilted like a forgotten balloon from your kid’s 4th birthday party:

4. Remove spinach to a plate. Take the three eggs you’ve beaten, added pepper and salt and a Tbsp-ish of water to and add them to the pan (still over med-high heat). Let this sit – don’t touch! – for about…4-5 minutes, or until it looks set. This is what I consider looking set:

5. Now add your extra ingredients – I used already cooked, cubed ham, the wilted spinach and some feta cheese today. But you could add any veggies or lean protein you wish. I apologize for this picture – but I was asked about a Wii game, a “what’s for lunch?” and a “you owe me for chores” all at the same time and I took a pic and didn’t check it for beauty. My ham was not purple. Trust me.:

6. Fold the omelette over (in half) and let sit another 2 minutes or so. Slide to a plate, and there you have it, a low carb, healthy lunch or breakfast. Enjoy!

Trainer Tuesday Without the Trainer

Posted on by
1

Thanks for the great questions we got during our Trainer Contest! We will be answering those in the upcoming weeks. But for today, Dave is busy getting people in shape and answering questions about whether eating two helpings of macaroni salad and three burgers over the holiday weekend is acceptable.

So here’s our roundup of Dave’s answers from May and at the end, I’ll announce our winner!

Does it matter what you eat as long as you keep your calories in check? 

How do we avoid muscle aches and pains? 

How do you know if you’ve had a good workout? 

Now – enough time roaming around the internet! Get up outta that chair and go for a walk! Jump rope! Do some pushups! Squats! Go! Fight! Win!

Trainer Contest: I collected the answers from the various ways we received them (email, here and on Facebook) and put them in the order they were received and used a random number generator to find the winner of the $20 Amazon gift card and the winner is…. Beth! Thanks, Beth, and congrats on the win!

Weekly Wrap-Up

Posted on by
2

Jeff wrote about inane things said on the softball field, stuff like “good eye,” and “my bad.” Perhaps if he spent more attention on his own game instead of thinking about stuff people say, everyone would be happier.

Trainer Dave answered the question about what makes a good workout and how much pain is associated with the words “good workout?”

Kelli talked about what satanic music she listens to while exercising and told us about the end of her latest get fit program.

Kelli also offered $20 to a random asker of a question to Trainer Dave.

Over on our I Ruin Sports Facebook page, the following links were posted:

NBA baller Kyrie Irving dresses up as an old man and goes to a local park to mess with people. Great stuff.

The best baseball catch you’ll ever see.

A video in memory of Brett Lawrie, suspended for throwing his helmet at an umpire.

Inane Softball Statements: Good Game

Posted on by
Reply

After each church softball game the teams exchange high fives and say “good game” to each other. This annoys me. I don’t mind good sportsmanship and whatnot, but honestly, most of the time someone aint telling the truth.

There are one of two possibilities going on here:

1) I am lying. If we have beaten you, seriously, you did not have a good game. There’s no way our team wins if the other team played a good game. If we lose, that doesn’t necessarily mean the winning team had a good game, it just means we played normal. Very few people in church softball have good games, which is why they are playing church softball to begin with.

2) I am being lied to. I am capable of having a good game one or two times a season, but most of the time I didn’t. I know my errors more than anyone else and to have people tell me I had a good game when I just want to go home and assume the fetal position for a night and cry, is not helpful.

Recently I have experimented with other adjectives, things like “fine game” or “nice game.” Those words have a much broader meaning. Perhaps the guy with the “nice game” was merely being a nice guy while playing the game. “Fine game” could technically mean the guy is eligible for fines due to bad play or bad attitude.

All I know is that this is the moment in all church softball games where church goers lie the most. Is this a time for more honesty, or do we just let it go and assume white lies are OK depending on context?

Inane Softball Statements: My Bad

Posted on by
1

Grounder hit to shortstop. Shortstop, shocked he caught the ball, throws18 feet over the head of the first-baseman. Shortstop then says, “My bad.”

And I cringe.

“My bad” bothers me for two reasons:

1) It’s grammatically impossible. Not that I’m a grammar expert, you’ll find numerous comma errors and run-ons and fragments in my writing, but let’s examine this phrase grammatically. “My” is a possessive pronoun. A pronoun substitutes for a proper name. “My” substitutes for Jeff. “My” also shows possession, Jeff owns something.

The something that is owned has to be a noun. A thing can only be a noun. However, “bad” is not a noun, it’s an adjective. “Bad” describes a thing and cannot be a thing. “Bad,” since it’s not a thing, cannot be owned. “My bad” makes no grammatical sense.

2) No kidding. I wasn’t the one who threw over the first-baseman’s head. Does the catcher say “Oh, good, glad you said that. For a minute I thought it was my bad.” No kidding it was your bad. Why would you assume you need to inform us of this? We all saw what happened.

I much prefer “oops,” or the humble “sorry” over this ungrammatical gibberish. The only thing worse than losing softball games is losing them while being ungrammatical.

Inane Softball Statements: Good Eye

Posted on by
1

Softball season started this past week. Generally, church softball is a very encouraging atmosphere. People try to be positive and nice and generally non-worldy in a very non-competitive “but our church is better than yours” kind of way.

When people are trying to be encouraging during an activity that clearly demonstrates one’s lack of talent, coordination and general well-being, pretty stupid things are said. Which leads me to this post:

Inane Softball Statements: Good eye.

This one cracks me up. People say “good eye” to a batter when the batter doesn’t swing at a pitch which is luckily called a ball.

I imagine that this statement is fine to say to most people but not to me. Anyone who watches me play softball should eventually observe that I never swing at the first pitch. I’ve not swung at a first pitch during the 17 years I’ve played church softball.

However, if paying attention were the norm of people playing church softball, they’d probably play something tougher than church softball. That being the case, every time I don’t swing at the first pitch and it’s a ball, someone says “good eye.”

This statement is also funny to me because I’m legally blind. I have never had a good eye, that’s one of the major problems in my life. But again, that whole “paying attention” gig aint at the top of talents church softball players have.

I’m waiting for the day when I hear “good foot” or “good neck.” It would also be refreshing when a guy looks at a strike to hear, “Bad eye.” Be original softball players.

Plan B – 2 Days To Go…

Posted on by
Reply

Apparently I am the only person in the world who can gain weight on a no carb diet. Yay, me!

Workout: 45 minutes on treadmill

Food: 
Brekkies: 2 eggs, 2 slices turkey bacon
Lunch: green beans, almonds and….oh yeah, a turkey burger with a little cheddar cheese.
Dinner: Chicken, green beans
Snack: Nuts, string cheese (x2)

Trainer Tuesday: What’s a “Good” Workout?

Posted on by
4

It’s Ask the Trainer day around these parts, so we interrupted our resident trainer, Dave (he was lifting massive weights with ease and with a smile on his face) and asked him the following (and read all the way to the end to see how you could win a little money):

Dave -
How do you know if you’ve done a “good” workout? Should you feel it? And should the feeling be painful or just…sore? How do you incrementally ramp up the workouts to make sure you keep improving?

It depends on the workout, but trusting in “feeling” can be deceptive, sort of like trusting sushi at a buffet. I like using a heart rate monitor for cardio workouts to ensure I’m working hard enough and setting and upper and lower heart rate limit.

For my lifting workouts, I track the weight I’ve lifted and try to improve weekly – you can use 5% as a goal. So if you benched 100 pounds for 10 reps this week, either try for 11 reps next week, or 105 pounds. For many of my athletes, I’ll test them in various lifts so we have a baseline to work from. But yes, you should feel pretty tired after a good workout and most people that think they are working out hard really aren’t, and then I have to make fun of them.

David Bauer has lots of letters after his name like this: MS, CPT, NCC, LPC, AHFS, BCWC. He owns his own gym where he runs Boot Camps, does personal training, nutrition counseling, mental/emotional health counseling and wellness coaching.

Want the chance to win a little money? All who send us a question via email OR in the comments, will be entered to win a $20 Amazon gift card -hey, $20 is $20, and will buy you some good summer reading. Ends midnight Saturday and one random winner will be drawn. If you would like to ask Dave a question to be featured here, email us at: iruinsports@att.net or post it in the comments below!